


rewrite it

by zauberer_sirin



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: ALL THE SKYE FEELS, Angst, Coulson used to be kind of a dick, Dom/sub Undertones, F/M, Fluff, Future Fic, Mild Kink, Resolved Sexual Tension, Skoulson RomFest 2k15, Skye | Daisy Johnson's Superpowers, Skye | Daisy Johnson-centric, Superheroes, Teasing, Unresolved Sexual Tension, power protocols, skoulsonfest2k15
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-25
Updated: 2015-01-25
Packaged: 2018-03-09 00:38:16
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,226
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3229655
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/zauberer_sirin/pseuds/zauberer_sirin
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Skye finds SHIELD's manual for dealing with people like her.</p>
<p>Written for the Skoulson RomFest 2k15 - Prompt: power protocols</p>
            </blockquote>





	rewrite it

**i.**

"If contamination has occurred the gifted individual must inform his/her handler or handlers as soon as possible in order to ameliorate the situation," Skye reads. "Contamination? We are not toxic."

"It means media contamination. In case the public at large discovers these abilities."

"You've read this?" she asks, waving the folder at him.

She's been occupied with it all morning, hiding away in Coulson's office. Her regular training has been suspected, indefinitely. 

"Every SHIELD agent has read this. How did you get a copy?"

"I tracked one down."

"Skye."

He's worried. Everyone's worried. Skye wishes they'd stop being worried. She's not the one who died. She hasn't left mother and uncles and cousins and second-cousins in mourning in her wake. She has none of those, her death would have been a lot cleaner in a way. Plus she's not sure she can ever learn to separate the way people worry about her as a person and the way people worry about her as a problem, an natural-disaster-scale problem. When people ask her how she's doing, are they really asking that or are they making sure everyone's safe? So. She kind of avoids people who might ask that question.

"I wanted to know," she tells him. "What SHIELD did with people like me back in the day. I should have be read the power protocols already, I know that."

"Those aren't the power protocols," Coulson says.

"No, it's worse – it's the _review_ of the power protocols. It's the how-to for agents unlucky enough to have to handle powered individuals."

It's the worst of corporate culture and the worst of old SHIELD; one face to the world and another way of doing things behind everyone's backs.

"Who the hell wrote this?" she comments, aggravated. "I bet whoever wrote this was Hydra. This sounds really xenophobic."

"Do you want to talk about it? You haven't so far."

Skye shrugs.

"I don't think I can. I have to use all my energy to control my – how did this guy called them? _Aberrant abilities_." Coulson winces. "I don't have the strength to get into a heart-to-heart about it."

Everything is still so raw. If she starts talking about it she'll start thinking about Trip and she can't just yet. It's easier to calculate the cost of rebuilding the east side of San Juan. It's easier to read this stuff over and over, until every word of "prevention" and "containtment" sinks in. Contain and prevent. Sounds good.

"Aberration, aberrant, that's just great," she mutters.

"That file has it wrong," Coulson says.

"The subject must not use his/her abilities for profit," she reads, ignoring his concern. Aberration sounds good to her right now. She snorts. "I don't think anyone would pay for an earthquake." Coulson gestures towards the document, with a pained expression. "What?"

"People would pay to _stop_ earthquakes."

Skye leaves her mouth open for a moment. 

"Oh god."

"I'm sorry," he says. "We should have got rid of any copy of that."

She keeps quiet for a moment. She remembers her original curiosity about the subject.

"Are you my handler?"

"What?"

"Or the _observer_? As the rules say. I mean, I must be under some kind of special authority. That's what SHIELD does with people like me."

"Did," Coulson corrects.

"And May is my SO but that's–"

"Different? Yes, it is."

Skye shrugs. She is not in the mood to train with May, or anyone, lately. It's just not effective. She's too worried about hurting someone. Coulson told her that feeling would go away, that they have experience with that and once she learns her limits she'll be comfortable with any kind of sparring partner. She's waiting. She's been patient. She swears she is.

"You're part of SHIELD," Coulson is telling her. "You're your own handler."

It's not like she doubts his honesty, in this very moment, but she knows how this goes.

"Yeah, sure, but if something happens _you_ 'll take responsibility," she says. "Just like you took responsibility for San Juan."

Coulson opens his mouth to say something but stops himself at the last moment. Skye catches him scratching his wrist nervously. She turns her attention back to the pamphlet.

" _Surveillance without intrusion_ ," she reads. "You're good at that."

He rolls his eyes at himself, pleading guilty on that one.

She knows Coulson wouldn't that to her anymore. Not even now that she has these super dangerous superpowers. But she still looks for it in his eyes, the fear she images in everybody. The edge of uncertainty they must walk on when they talk to her. She's spent days looking at Coulson, at his eyes, waiting for the moment it reveals itself, the terror her father predicted everybody would feel. The terror _she_ feels. She waits for it, waits for Coulson to slip, if this is just a mask. She keeps looking for that ugly glint in his eyes and it never comes.

 

 

**ii.**

She spends time in his office, but not when he is in. It gives her a sense of safety, of going back to a different time, but she doesn't want to actually see him. She didn't mean to become withdrawn – specially around Coulson – but she needs the quiet these days. Being alone sucks big time, but it's also easier. Quiet and peace.

She pokes at the inside of her elbow, the little bit of cotton taped to her skin.

"How was the check up?" Coulson asks, walking into his office in some kind of hurry.

Skye gives him a bored look. "The same. It's not going to go away. Whatever the Obelisk did to rewrite my biology – or _unlock_ stuff, whetever we are saying these days. It's here to stay."

"We figured that already," he says with a sympathetic look. He's been good at respecting her distance, but she can see it frustrates him.

"I guess," she says. She's stuck on the page about follow ups and schedules. "This says that during the first year after SHIELD classifies me as a gifted I have to be available for contact with the organization _at all times_ and that I should submit myself to any request for physical or psychological tests my observer might put forward. Do I get holidays on the second year?"

"You should stop reading that stuff," Coulson tells her.

"Yeah, it's depressing me a lot."

"Then stop."

"I can't. This is my life now. All these panicked rules, I get it, I see it every day."

The team is good, the team is great, but being out there, on the field, people have different reactions, when they see what she can do. And Skye knows ordinary, frightened people don't owe her anything, much less consideration for her feelings, but – she still wants to be a field agent, _just_ a field agent, who can fight and use a rifle with perfect aim and hack her way into heavily guarded compounds. 

Coulson walks around the desk to her side.

"Skye. SHIELD doesn't work like that anymore. The power protocols have been wiped out for a reason."

"Because of you," she says. Coulson looks away. "You did away with that, just like the Levels."

"It was all tainted. I couldn't be sure–" he stops himself. Yeah, Hydra must have made him wonder how many of the decisions he took for almost thirty years were in the service of the side of good and which were in the service of Nazis. It must be tough, that he can never know. He continues: "We need to stop thinking everything again for the first time."

Skye likes that idea. She's always been one for seeing things anew every time. That was the whole point of the Rising Tide, question all received knowledge. She looks at Coulson. He might be offended if she told him but she thinks he would have made a good Rising Tide member.

"You're a good Director," she tells him instead.

He gives her a pained smile.

"No. I'm just a person doing his best, for what that's worth."

"Well, I like your best."

 

 

**iii.**

"This one's funny," she says. Coming from a not-so-funny mission she picks the manual up like a talisman. She's tired and sore but she is still not unwinding, not naturally.

"What is?" Coulson asks, closing the mission folder one last time.

Skye can't believe she hasn't noticed this one clause on the power protocols before.

She thinks Coulson would find it funny too. Things have been going a lot better lately –and what do you know, that feeling like she is going to hurt everybody around her? it actually passed, for the most part– and they have been enjoying their time together. And with their last couple of wins against Hydra (Skye tries to stay modest about that, but fails) Coulson looks a bit less stressed.

" _A non-fraternization rule between the observed and the observer_ ," she reads. "What is that? Was this a problem?"

"It could be. I imagine there must have been some cases of transference."

"Really? That happened a lot?"

"Not to my knowledge," Coulson says, looking uncomfortable with this line of inquiry, which Skye finds a bit out of character. "But there's always the possibility that gifted and handler develop a particularly close relationship under such extraordinary circumstances."

"And that's bad?" she asks. She's a fan of particularly close relationships under extraordinary circumstances.

"Hopefully no SHIELD agent would take advantage of that tranferrence but... The power imbalance, yeah, it's not a good thing."

Skye gets that, and she knows how icky it would be if it were common practice, they should protect the gifteds, yes. 

"That's why there are so many warnings instructing observers not to get emotionally involved in their cases."

"I guess," Coulson says, rather lamely.

Skye studies his face. Which is not easy because Coulson is trying very hard to turn his face away from her.

"You agree with this rule," she points out.

Coulson turns to her with that particular expression of being ticked off because Skye has hit bullseye.

"I can see why it was useful," he says. "I guess it's lucky in this case we don't have to worry about that."

"Why?" Skye asks. In part she thought the rule was funny because she thought Coulson wouldn't mind the idea, even if nothing could come out of it for now. And anyway she thought he didn't considered himself responsible for her, she thought the rule wouldn't apply.

But Coulson frowns, surprised at the question.

"Because we don't."

"Don't we?"

"No. I'm –" he gestures towards himself and the message is pretty clear. "And you are... the question wouldn't come up. It's absurd."

"Absurd?"

"Yes."

"Absurd. Oh, okay, fine, I get it."

Her voice is sharp and angry,

She wonders how much of this is a childish tantrum – she now wants what she's been told she can't have. But she is not that person anymore and Coulson is something too big to risk on a whim.

She closes the folder with the stupid power protocols – Coulson can have them; if he wants his precious non-fraternization comparmentalizing loser nonsense he can have it all – and stands up, walking towards the door.

At least he's not surprised, doesn't ask what he's done wrong. He winces, like he is trying to take back his words. But yeah, no, he looked like he meant it. Maybe he is just worried she's going to wreck some eight on the Richter scale havoc, who knows, those sad protocols talk a lot about the emotional well-being of gifteds whose powers are linked to their emotions, Director Coulson should be careful. Skye's allowed to feel a bit petty – absurd, he said "absurd", of course he thinks it's absurd – at least from her chair to the door.

Coulson goes after her, reaching her before she opens the door.

"Skyewait." It's a single word.

"Why? Apparently I am absurd," she replies, not looking at him yet, _proud_ and surprised at how much this matters to her.

"That's not what I meant."

"No. You meant _we_ are absurd."

She reaches for the doorknob.

"Skye, don't leave," he says, a strange pleading tone for the Director of SHIELD. Even with her, even though she realizes she's some sort of exception (though maybe not enough of an exception, it seems), he's never that direct.

"Why?" she asks, tired. "What are you going to do?"

Coulson just reaches out, holding on to her shoulder and, after a moment of stillness where he seems disappointingly at a loss for words, he tugs her in, against him, and kisses her.

And those stupid non-fraternization rules? It turns out they are _really_ stupid, if he can kiss her like this, if they can kiss like this. She didn't bring up the protocol to try and trick Coulson into making out with her – she swears it was innocent, she swears she didn't know how much she wanted him to make out with her until she realized it might never happen – and she should probably tell Coulson this wasn't a trap, but now she is glad she tracked down a copy of the memo in the first place. She grabs Coulson by the lapel and by the tie and pulls him back with her, opening his mouth further. He touches her hair and then her shoulders, like he doesn't know where to put his hands. Anywhere's fine, Skye keeps thinking, wanting to say, closing her mouth over his lower lip and sucking.

Coulson flattens his palms against her hips and presses her into the glass door. Skye knows this is – mostly – just kissing but she is really turn on.

Coulson tears those lips from her and she feels so unhappy, perfectly and irrationally devastated.

"Wha–?"

But she guesses he is allowed to stop kissing her if he doesn't want to.

"Skye, before we go on," he says. Which is a good thing with a lot of exclamation points, because that means he wants to go on, he _plans_ to go on. "You need to know something."

She narrows her eyes. "Okay..."

"About the power protocols manual, I –"

"You wrote it," she interrupts him.

He steps back, but he is still touching her arms.

"You knew? Since when'"

"Since a while back."

"Why didn't you say something?" he asks.

"Because you didn't tell me so I imagined it wasn't something you wanted to discuss with me," Skye tells him. "And because I know the man who wrote those things is not the man standing in front of me now."

"I'm really sorry."

She shakes her head. "You wrote all those ugly things about people like me but when I changed... you weren't afraid of me. I saw it."

He raises his fingertips to her mouth in a strangely reverential gesture.

"How could I ever be afraid of you?"

 

 

**iv.**

She turns the page over, shifting where she sits, extracting a comfortable groan.

"If fraternization has occurred observer and observed should avoid any further contact," she reads, still on the non-fraternization bit.

"I can't believe you wrote this," she adds, running her thumb across his belly.

"I know," Coulson agrees, trying not to move his hips, Skye stradding him like a challenge.

She likes the oddly vulnerable image of him shirtless but not just naked. She hasn't seem him – she can't wait, but she will wait, just to tease him a bit more – but she has the feeling that naked he'd be more comfortable, feel more powerful or himself. She doesn't know, she has these weird ideas about him and what he really is like. She likes she's in the inverse position, in her t-shirt and underwear, the rough feel of the fabric of his pants against the inside of her bare thighs. 

"Well, fraternization hasn't _occurred_ just yet," Skye says, grinding her hips down on Coulson's erection, painfully trapped under his clothes and under her weight.

"Skye..." he pleads, he whines. 

"I think we should write new power protocols."

"Definitely," he says, running his finger along the waistband of her underwear.

"I vote for – _Observer and observed should stay as close as possible, having further contact as often as their very busy lives allow. At least twice a day._ "

"Twice a day?"

"It's in the power protocols now," she shrugs. "Don't blame me."

"I guess if it's in the power protocols..."

"And I'm sure the Director is _up_ for it."

He chuckles, but it turns into a low groan under her body. 

He hooks his fingers into her underwear, as if he intends to pull it apart, but he doesn't, just hangs on to it like an anchor. Skye likes that, Coulson tugging a bit now and then, the fabric digging into her flesh to his will, Coulson knowing exactly what he's doing with that. She groans too.

"I should learn how to vibrate clothes off people," she says, reaching under her, palming his crotch.

Coulson looks at her in some sort of lustful adoration. 

"I missed you," he says.

"Yeah?"

"I know I didn't say. All those months you were – not talking, and not with me. It was frustrating."

"That's ironic."

Coulson nods and she goes to work on his belt. She can almost feel him struggling to keep still as she takes his pants and boxers in her hands and pulls them down to his knees, while she sits back on his bare thighs, feeling the soft layer of hair and the strong muscles against her own skin. It's the middle of the day, people must be asking where the Director and his superhero subordinate are. Skye looks down at the picture before her.

"I think this is a good look on you," she says.

Coulson laughs, seemingly uncocerned about the way Skye is studying his cock so intently right now. "Under you? I had the feeling it would be."

She settles on his lap once more, hands reaching for his chest. She runs her thumb up the line of his scar while she slides her hips along his length.

"Skye, you're gonna make me–"

She kisses him, quick and dirty, feeling him shiver, feeling his erection, wonderfully impatient, pressed against her stomach.

"You don't think I'm an aberration?" she asks, pressing down on his hips, knowing he doesn't, needing to hear it.

Coulson lifts his hand to her face, covering her cheek with his palm and brushing his thumb against the corner of her mouth.

"I think you're a miracle," he says, and it catches both their breaths a moment, silly and sappy as it sounds. Then he smiles: "I'll make sure to put that in the new power protocols."

She sits back. "What makes you think I'm going to let _you_ write the new version?"

His smile slips a bit, a shadow of doubt there, and his expression turns tender towards her.

"I was thinking maybe... we could write it together."

She arches an eyebrow. Okay, she's impressed. Because it's not a line. And she'd like that very much. It's all she wanted, it's all Coulson wanted too. Build this thing together. So maybe it's not such a bad thing that she got this aberrant ability or gift or whatever they want to call it. SHIELD needed the input, anyway.

She leans down again and kisses him.

She forgets about such lofty political ideals for a bit.


End file.
